Thom Yorke asks Brixton why they didn't go to see Oasis

Radiohead headlined Brixton Academy on Saturday 4 November, the London night of their seven-date UK tour), while Oasis were playing Earls Court across the city. A Tatler writer who was at Brixton puts the crowd there at about 4,500, against 21,000 a night for Oasis. Thom Yorke asked the Brixton crowd about it, as one fan reviewer remembers it.

So why have you all come here instead of going to see Oasis tonight?

Thom Yorke²

He talked to the crowd a good deal, had more cracks at Oasis along the way, and told them his lyrics had nothing to do with him or his life.

The band opened on a mostly acoustic “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and played every song on The Bends except “Sulk”. Two songs in the set are on no record yet: “Man of War”, which the file list of the recording calls “Big Boots”, and an acoustic “Subterranean Homesick Alien” at the start of the first encore. An audience recording of the whole night circulates and is on the Internet Archive.

Hayley North, reviewing the show for the UK fanzine Radiohead World Service, picks “My Iron Lung” as the high point, with the strobes going and a wave of crowd-surfing. She found the old Pablo Honey songs, “Creep” and “Stop Whispering”, holding their own beside the new album.

Setlist